Over the years, after talking with tens of thousands of entrepreneurs, artists and creatives, almost every success story we’ve heard has been filled with stories of failure. Unfortunately, in our view the media rarely covers these parts of the story – instead we often read summaries that make it seem like success happened “overnight.” However, what we’ve learned in our conversations with so many successful folks is that failure is core ingredient in the recipe for future success. Below, we’ve shared some fascinating stories of failure from folks who have ultimately found great success.

Patricia W. Fischer

Martial artist legend Bruce Lee is credited with a great quote: Don’t fear failure — not failure, but low aim is the crime. In great attempts, it is glorious even to fail. Glorious to even fail. In theory, that all sounds reasonable, and logical even, but it’s an ego blow when reality chimes in. Read more>>

Gwen Jimmere

I started my first company, Naturalicious in 2013 with just $32 in the bank as a single mom; and grew it to over $20 million in revenue. I then started another company, Good Hair Bar, a state-of-the-art salon and spa. Unlike when I started Naturalicious, I had plenty of capital to start that business. Read more>>

Tiara Feyjoo

Starting my business “Pretty Girl Promo LLC” I had a group of women coming together for events, parties, business collabs etc. I started this group with over 50% of friends I grew up with. Women who knew me since middle school and high school so before I became a business owner so the respect wasn’t all the way there… Read more>>

Jennifer Johnson

It was 2020 and we were facing the closure of our store for several months due to covid. This time allowed me to find the cracks in my business and what I found was not what I expected. My failure in my business was the culture that my team at the time was creating. Read more>>